Background noodlings
WORK IN PROGRESS Text log: Pyre says, "Lore and background. Anyone have any thoughts in that direction?" Fulcrum says, "Hm." Fulcrum says, "Background for giant transforming art-deco robots" Pyre yups. Pyre starts the ball rolling with: the engines I'm looking at are both zone based. Pyre says, "Both can handle in around 2 to 3 thousand people at a time." Fulcrum says, "Abandoned artifacts of a cilivisation that fell to disease? Post Technological-singularity existance?" Pyre says, "Across multiple zones." Pyre says, "Anywayas. Lore: What if the zone seperations had a reason?" Pyre says, "More than just inside/outside" Fulcrum says, "Like the edicts of an insane/senile World Mind?" Fulcrum says, "Who has divided the world from its vantage point in orbit?" Pyre says, "That's not bad. ;) I was thinking this: What if the planet, whatever is is, was destroyed?" Fulcrum says, "?" Pyre says, "Past tense. It's now a collection of bridged aesteroids." Pyre says, "Each aesteroid is a zone." Pyre says, "Means we can have underground complexes, robot cities, and ruined human cities for scale." Fulcrum says, "Held together by the incredible forcefield strands of a crazy world mind in the center of the asteroid swarm" Pyre laughs. you like the world mind idea. ;) Redshift says, "and crazy world mind's menangerie of automatons are the baddies fer killin'" Fulcrum says, "I just like the idea of a crazy AI. Not malicious, just odd as all hell." Fulcrum says, "Well, not ACTIVELY malicious." Fulcrum says, "I like the idea of AIs that originally had functions but have been left alone for so long that they've developed past them, but in doing so have had to go a bit odd" Pyre says, "That's what I was thinking for the Drone AI's" Fulcrum says, "Because to evolve they've had to subvert their core programming, their basic reason for living." Pyre says, "A dungeon, for example, might be the remains of a factory, the drones all controlled by a single AI unit." Fulcrum says, "And even so they still maintain a kernel of that original programming/skillset" Records of the human diaspora are fragmentary at best, occuring as it did near the beginning of documented history. A scarce handful of worlds are famous, infamous, or fastidious enough for the story of their colonisation to be taught as fact rather than whispered as myth. However, it can be assumed that the crew of the sleeper ship sent to was expecting to settle on a terrestrial planet at a habitable distance from its local star, possibly with reserves of ice or liquid water, perfect for terraforming. What they found was a ring of rocky debris, the remains of an unknown extra-solar object that had collided with and destroyed the planet even before the light of its parent sun was detected by ancient telescopes. Unable or unwiling to remain in stasis for the millenia it may take for gravitational attraction to reform their world from the field of debris, the colonists settled on one of the largest and most stable planetoids and went to work making a home in the pieces of their shattered Eden. Driven by desperation and with an inexhaustable supply of metal-rich rocks, the colonists quickly expanded beyond their original landing ground. Aided by the superhuman intelligence of their ship's computer, they turned their increasing technological sophistication towards improving the living conditions on each newly settled asteroid. The first outposts were crude tunnel complexes converted from labrynthine mine workings, but they quickly became more sophisticated. Asteroids were hollowed out and spun for gravity. Forcefields were put in place and atmosphere created from outgassing and induced comet strike. Whole rocks were planed flat and installed with artificial gravity generators, their surfaces turned into parks, cities and factories. Two thousand years after first footfall, a civilisation of millions spread out over a dyson swarm of worldlets that was once a barren asteroid field. Each world held stable in its path by invisible tendrils of force projected and controlled by the mothership's super-computer, now expanded to encompass the first colonised asteroid and calling itself WorldMind. The semi-sapient robotic drones, ubiquitous in the construction and colonisation process were now ever-present in all facets of life, from the most menial of mining labours to lecturing at centers of learning. Ritual wars were fought between rival asteroid nations, their combat droids destroying each other on specially sculpted battlefield asteroids for the pleasure of the thousands in attendance and the millions watching system-wide. Other planetoids were devoted to recreation, production, agriculture or still mined for their natural resourses. From humble and desperate beginings, the system was now a unique civilisation with a carefully managed yet still growing population, occupying hundreds of invidual asteroids linked by a network of teleportation nodes. Man and machine lived in decadant symbiosis. There was even talk of constructing exploration ships to seek out the other pockets of humanity scattered over the galactic disc. Three thousand years after first footfall, there was not one living human remaining on any asteroid in the system.